The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,33

were outside the prison walls, walking through the parking lot, but the building still bore down ominously. She could hear screaming because there was always screaming when people were locked in cages.

“So.” Charlie slid on a pair of sunglasses. “Did you see the new guy in latent prints?”

“The one who looks like outdoorsy Rob Lowe?”

“He invited me for a drink. I almost packed a suitcase.” Charlie shook his head. “I’m such a Charlotte.”

“Charlotte always knew what she wanted.” Sara tried to maintain their casual tone. “Have you talked to Will lately?”

Charlie took off his sunglasses. “About what?”

The question had given away too much. And it was pointless anyway. Will was not one to volunteer his feelings. Normally, Sara found a way to pull him out of his shell, but she had hit her limit on shell-pulling. She loved Will with every fiber of her being. She wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him. She wasn’t expecting fireworks or a parade, but she wanted him to at least ask the damn question. I want your mother to be happy was a life goal, not a marriage proposal. The fact that forty-three days had passed without Will bringing it up again was maddening. Sara did not want a silent husband. She sure as hell was not going to be a silent wife.

“Sara?” Charlie asked. “What’s up?”

Fortunately, her phone started to buzz. She had a text from Will, an icon of a telephone receiver with a question mark. Most of their written communications were pictorial. Will was dyslexic. He could read, but not quickly. Sara knew that the rest of the world texted with emojis, but she liked to think that she and Will had developed their own special language.

She told Charlie, “I need to make a call.”

“I’ll help Gary finish up.” He walked ahead. “We should be ready to roll in five.”

“I’ll be there in two.” Sara was certain Will was calling to discuss what to order for dinner. He was terrified he would starve to death if he went more than an hour without food.

Besides, it wasn’t like Will had avoided talking about something else that was very important for the last forty-three days.

He answered on the first ring. Instead of a hello, he asked, “Can you talk?”

Something was wrong. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He sounded unsure. “We have to talk. I don’t want you to be mad. I was wrong to let it go on for this long. I’m sorry.”

Sara put her hand to her eyes. Forty-three motherfucking days. He could not be calling to have that conversation right now. “Babe, I’m standing in a parking lot outside of a prison.”

He seemed taken aback, which was the point of her tone. “Sara, I—”

“Will.” She was already primed to be annoyed by Tessa, but this was enough to send her over the edge. “You’ve had six damn weeks to—”

“Daryl Nesbitt.”

The name was gibberish.

Until it wasn’t.

Sara’s brain flashed through a set of images like the disk on a Viewfinder. She was back in Grant County. Walking through the field. Feeling Jeffrey’s eyes on her. Kneeling in the woods. Waiting for the ambulance. Blood on her hands. Air whistling through the barrel of Jeffrey’s plastic pen. Lena running uselessly into the clearing with the defibrillator that they weren’t going to need.

Sara pressed her fingers into her eyelids. Tears squeezed out.

“Sara?”

“What about Nesbitt?”

“He’s here. He’s made some charges against Lena Adams.” Will stopped, as if he expected her to say something. “And, uh, he’s also said some things, some bad things, about …”

Sara’s lungs tightened as she pushed out the word. “Jeffrey.”

“Yeah.” He paused again. “Really bad things.”

Her hand went to her throat. Unbidden, she thought about the way Jeffrey used to stroke her neck when they were lying in bed. She banished the memory. “Nesbitt is saying that he was framed? That the department acted illegally?”

“Yes.”

Sara nodded, because this wasn’t a new charge. “He tried to sue Jeffrey’s estate in civil court.” In effect, he had tried to sue Sara. At the time, she was still struggling to come to terms with Jeffrey’s death. Sleeping too much, crying too much, taking too many sleeping pills and not caring whether or not she woke up. “The case was dismissed. What does he want now?”

“He’s offering to trade some information if we re-open the investigation.”

Sara could not stop nodding. It was her body’s way of trying to make sense of this, as if she could anticipate everything that was